June 2026: Edmond J. Safra Center supports TAU iGEM team

A multidisciplinary team of students from TAU, led by Prof. Tamir Tuller, Edmond J. Safra member (Engineering), is participating in the iGEM 2026 competition for the eighth time.

The International Genetically Engineered Machine competition (iGEM) is the world’s largest synthetic biology competition. Every year, hundreds of teams from across the globe are challenged to design biology-based solutions to real-world problems, combining science, engineering, and creativity on an international stage.

This year, the TAU team’s project is CERNAL - a compiler-like engine for RNA logic - designed to address a challenge that has stood in the way of synthetic biology, medicine, and biotechnology for decades: how to design a biological circuit that activates selectively inside a specific cell state (e.g. in a diseased cell, specific tissue, or specific condition), and nowhere else. Today this is done via a trial and error approach, with very limited success and with no computational modeling. CERNAL aims to resolve this problem, taking a user’s description of a specific cell condition and outputting a ready-to-use RNA-based logic circuit automatically.

With CERNAL, anyone developing intracellular circuits, from academic researchers to biotech and pharmaceutical companies, could define the relevant molecular signature and receive a fully designed genetic circuit in return, one that will activate exclusively in cells and conditions carrying that signature, enabling precise mode of operation. The circuits operate by detecting RNA biomarkers uniquely present in target cells and conditions and triggering precise gene regulation in response.

CERNAL development integrates bioinformatics, machine learning, RNA structure prediction, and molecular modeling, with experimental wet lab work to validate each computational design. The project is supervised by Prof. Tuller, with steering committee support from Profs. Martin Kupiec, Uri Gophna, and Avigdor Eldar, all Edmond J. Safra Center PIs (Life Sciences).

The Edmond J. Safra Center is one of the iGEM TAU team’s sponsors.